A bid to open Albany up to tar sands oil

ALBANY—A Massachusetts company is quietly trying to transform the Port of Albany into one of the first locations on the east coast capable of shipping crude oil from the tar sands of Western Canada.

Tar sands oil is viewed by environmentalists as among the dirtiest fossil fuels, because of the energy it requires to extract and transport. If spilled, it is nearly impossible to clean up after it soaks into the soil, and can cause particular harm to watersheds because the oil sinks into the bottom sediment.

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As a precaution, ports on both coasts, including one in Portland, Maine, just this week, have imposed moratoriums on the shipping of tar sands crude.

“It's the most destructive petroleum product around; it will do untold environmental harm,” said Lloyd Burton, a University of Colorado professor and expert in the rail transport of hazardous materials.

The facility proposed for Albany would allow heavy crude as well as biofuels to be offloaded from train cars and piped into a ship, for transport down the Hudson River to refineries along the coast.

Global Companies of Waltham, Massachusetts has not identified the source of the heavy crude it wants to ship through Albany in any publicly available document. Company officials have only told Albany city planner Brad Glass that they want to bring in “heavy crude,” he said.

The new facility calls for four boilers, which are necessary to heat the thick crude so that it will flow easier and can be offloaded.

That represents a key sign the crude that may soon flow through Albany will be from the Athabasca deposit in Alberta, Burton said. At a preliminary hearing before the Albany planning board on Thursday night, a company official would only say that the oil will come from a "variety of sources."

Multiple requests for comment to Global, and to a project engineer, were not returned.

The application submitted to city planners, who have jurisdiction over the plant just outside of the port, is vague. Glass said the city only has say over the building, not the environmental regulations associated with shipping oil. The state Department of Environmental Conservation has already determined that the proposed project does not entail significant environmental risk, and the department conducted a preliminary environmental impact statement rather than a more serious review.

Tar sands oil, which has the consistency of molasses,must be heated before being offloaded. It can settle into a solid state during transportation, and is not explosive like other oil. However, spills are extremely challenging to clean.

Documents obtained by Capital show Global is preparing to bring six trains of up to 100 cars a month to the facility. The oil will be heated to 100 degrees, and it will take 20 hours to offload an entire train, the documents show.

The rail transportation of Alberta tar sands crude is widely expected to increase because of the long-running federal fight over the Keystone XL pipeline, which would stretch from Canada across the U.S. to the Gulf of Mexico. That project is currently stalled, even as the formation continues to produce a significant amount of oil. Other pipeline projects to transport the oil have also hit political stumbling blocks. So, companies have essentially created a pipeline by rails throughout the United States and Canada to move the oil because of the stalled pipeline. The next challenge is finding a port willing to move it.